The Demise of CNN

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CygnusX1
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The Demise of CNN

Post by CygnusX1 »

Thursday, April 16, 2009

The Most Busted Name In News: Susan Roesgen Brands CNN

Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 9:06 AM

Tens of thousands of Americans attended tea parties yesterday, and the
vast trove of video, audio and print posts on the parties proves that they
were indeed grassroots expressions of concern over the direction of the
country and that the vast, vast majority of participants were mainstream
Americans eager to communicate concern over the massive deficits
proposed by President Obama, a spending spree which far, far exceeds
even the significant amount of red ink spilled by President Bush.

The large crowds in California especially, which just got hammered with
massive tax hikes to pay for out-of-control spending in the Golden State,
were animated by a desire to send a message to Sacramento that its
ways are deeply unpopular and that the deeply deceptive six ballot
measures scehduled for a vote in May are facing a huge opposition.

Thousands of people showed up at scores of locations around the
country, which made the gatherings big news deserving serious reporting.

As any fair reporting would have conveyed, the crowds were
overwhelmingly middle class and the moods' celebratory. Of course
some extreme viewpoints glommed on at the fringes of the crowd and
some unusual types showed up, but the massive numbers of ordinary,
hard-working and tax-paying Americans deserved fair representation in
the MSM, which of course they did not receive.

This biased coverage was nicely summed up by the hilarious and instantly
archetypal "report" by CNN's Susan Roesgen, which begins with Susan
plucking (from the hundreds of available tea party participants) one guy
with an Obama/Hitler sign, and then follows this superb bit of news
gathering with a contentious, argumentative interview with a man with a
baby who wants to talk about the principles of Lincoln.

When Roesgen morphs into Robert Gibbs and begins to lecture the man
about his eligibility for a tax refund and the amount of stimulus spending
the state of Illinois is going to receive, Roesgen does more to end the
media bias debate in this country than a dozen books by Bernard
Goldberg.

We can all rely on Roesgen and her producers to keep a close watch on
the White House and the Democratic majorities in Congress, right?

It is indeed wrong and offensive to make comparisons of the president to
Hitler, just as it was to do the same to President Bush, though I don't
recall ever seeing a CNN reporter object to those outrages or call out
such a protester.

By all means - send me a link to such an exchange, and I will post it as
an update.

Bush was in office for eight years, and Obama for three months, so I
expect that there must be at least 24 instances of a CNN "reporter"
challenging an anti-Bush demonstrator on the offensiveness of their
displays.

It was extremely unprofessional for "reporter" Roesgen to attempt to
brand the tea parties by reference to that particular guy, but it got worse
when Roesgen interrupts and hectors the participant she called on to
explain his views, and then, clearly flustered, to brand the tea parties as
the product of the "right wing Fox News" or to seek sympathy from the
audience by calling the assembly "anti-CNN" and "not fit for family
viewing."

I played the audio a number of times on my show yesterday because it is
at once so hilarious and also so damningly revealing about Roesgen's
politics and utter lack of professionalism.

She's an Obama-Pelosi apologist, and after yesterday's fit, she'll never be
anything but that. Get her a show on MSNBC with the other Obama
apologists, but how can CNN continue to treat her as a "reporter?"

The veil dropped and the public got all the confirmation it will ever need:

She's a lefty pretending to be an "objective" journalist, Olberman in a
skirt. CNN can't unbake that cake.

That's not even the most important revelation. Roesgen demonstrated
that she would intervene in a story to twist it --that's what made the few
minutes so priceless.

There are lots of lefty journalists. A few years back on my show Thomas
Edsall, a very influential MSM'er then at the Washington Post, candidly
branded mainstream media as "overwhelmingly left" and put the ratio of
liberal-to-conservative in the MSM at 15-to-25 to 1.

Very few honest folks dispute Edsall, but the increasingly obvious problem
is that the liberal reporters are becoming less talented and less learned,
and much more willing to manipulate the news. Roesgen was just
embarrassingly obvious about her limits and her "journalistic ethics," but
she's hardly alone.

Every day on CNN, Wolf Blitzer --a smart professional who, along with
Anderson Cooper, are struggling to uphold the last bits of CNN's
reputation-- has to make it through the Situation Room carrying the
burden of Jack Cafferty's sophomoric rants. Cafferty was supposed to
be a sort of light-weight Andy Rooney, but he's become a left-wing crank,
an older male version of Roesgen. Add in Rick Sanchez shouting out his
own inanities and CNN has suddenly got a Murderer's Row of
laughingstock "journalists."

The old sort of bias at CNN --Christiane Amanpour being the most obvious
of the leftwingers with mics at the network-- was at least concealed
behind the faux sophistication of far flung travel and apparent learning.

Center-left and even pure left reporters are not the problem if they are
transparent about their politics and not tasked with objective reporting of
the oppositions positions and platform.

On Tuesday I spent an hour with the New York Times' Nicholas Kristof, a
man of the left, but smart and experienced, and I suspect confident
enough about his own talents to not feel obliged to disfigure the
arguments of his opponents. Sending lightweights out to report
important but complicated stories fairly invites them to manipulate the
news because they simply don't grasp what is being argued.

In over their heads, they panic and start punching below the belt.

That doesn't happen with talented lefties.

That's a subset of reporters that certainly excludes Roesgen, Sanchez and
Cafferty. These are, simply put, not very bright people for whom ever
unscripted moment is a cliff; certainly not professional, and not of any
use to a network trying hard to set the "standard" for straight news
gathering.

Yesterday was a huge opportunity for CNN to demonstrate that it could be
an objective news gathering organization through the years of Obama.

It flunked the test, and lost millions of potential viewers to Fox on a more-
or-less permanent basis.

Ratings suicide-by-stupidity.

Isn't there anyone in the executive suites of CNN watching the demise of
the Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle, and (soon) the Los
Angeles Times? Has the network given up and simply decided it needs to
compete with MSNBC?

No serious news organization can afford to drive away a third to half of its
potential customers. By lurching so far to the left, CNN is risking not just
the conservative cable watcher, but also the center-right and
independent viewer, and even no doubt some Democrats who prefer
their news straight.

But so deep is the bias that there doesn't seem to be anything that CNN
could do to remedy it, except perhaps make Blitzer and Cooper pull
12 - hour shifts with only Candy Crowley and Ed Henry reporting from the
field.
Don't start none...won't be none.
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Big Blue Owl
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Post by Big Blue Owl »

Left out Lou Dobbs, who is a creepy old freak. His teeth aren't the only things in his mouth that are false.

I love Jack Cafferty, and you would too if he was a righty. :)

And CNN will live longer than we will. No demise there.
(((((((((((((((all'a you)))))))))))))))
CygnusX1
Posts: 17306
Joined: Wed Oct 05, 2005 12:53 pm
Location: We don't call 911 here.

Post by CygnusX1 »

Big Blue Owl wrote: Left out Lou Dobbs, who is a creepy old freak. His teeth aren't the only things in his mouth that are false.
LMAOROFL You ain't right, Bro! :lol:
Don't start none...won't be none.
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